Garcilaso de la Vega (12 April 1539 – 23 April 1616), born Gómez Suárez de Figueroa and known as El Inca or Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, was a chronicler and writer from the SpanishViceroyalty of Peru.[1] The son of a Spanish conquistador and an Inca noblewoman, he is recognized primarily for his contributions to Inca history, culture, and society. His work was influential, well-received, and particularly notable for being the first literature by an author born in the Americas to enter the western canon.

Garcilaso arrived in Spain in 1561 and traveled to Montilla where he met his father's brother, Alonso de Vargas, who became Garcilaso's protector.[3] Garcilaso soon traveled to Madrid to seek recognition for the rights of his father.[3]

Garcilaso was educated in Spain after his father's death in 1560.

He remained in Spain and did not return to his native country (now Peru) because of the danger his royal Inca lineage presented in uncertain times. It is recorded that he died in Córdoba, Spain on 23 April 1616, but the date could also be the 22 or the 21, given the inaccuracy of the existing documents.

He lived in the town of Montilla until 1591, when he moved to Córdoba until his death. Apparently, he had a first son in 1570, who might have died at a very young age. He then had a second son, Diego de Vargas, in 1590, who helped him copy the Royal Commentaries and survived him until at least 1651. The mothers of both children were two of Garcilaso's servants.

23 April 1616, the supposed death date of Garcilaso, is also the same day that Miguel de Cervantes, Spain's greatest writer and the author of Don Quixote, passed away. It is also the recorded date of the death of William Shakespeare, although Shakespeare actually died on 3 May of that year, before the calendar was amended.

He received a first-rate, but informal European education in Spain after he relocated there at age 21. His works have enormous literary value, and are not mere historical chronicles. His maternal family were the ruling Inca, and as such, he portrays the Inca as benevolent rulers who governed a country where everybody was well-fed and happy. Nonetheless, he received first-hand accounts of daily Inca life from his maternal relatives, much of which he conveyed in his writings, and he gives accurate information about the system of tribute and labor enforced by the Incas. His depiction of Incan religion and gradual expansion is nurtured by his Christianized view of the indigenous past[citation needed]; no mention is made of human sacrifices in Inca times. Whether this was a deliberate attempt to portray his Inca ancestors in a good light, or mere ignorance given that he lived most of his life in Spain, is not known.

It was in Spain that Garcilaso wrote his famous Comentarios Reales de los Incas, published in Lisbon in 1609, and based on stories he had been told by his Inca relatives when he was a child in Cusco. The Comentarios contained two parts: the first about Inca life, and the second about the Spanish conquest of Peru, published in 1617. Many years later (1780), when the uprising against colonial oppression led by Tupac Amaru II gained traction, a royal edict by Charles III of Spain banned the Comentarios from being published or distributed in Lima due to its "dangerous" content. The book was not printed again in the Americas until 1918, but copies continued to be circulated.[4]

Even before the Comentarios Reales, Garcilaso had also written his popular La Florida del Inca, an account of Hernando de Soto's expedition and journey of Florida. The work was published in Lisbon in 1605. It contains the chronicles of de Sotos's expedition according to information Garcilaso gathered during various years, and defends the legitimacy of imposing the Spanish sovereignty in conquered territories and submit them to Christian jurisdiction. He also defends the dignity, courage and rationality of the Native Americans.

Historians have identified problems with using La Florida as an historical account. Milanich and Hudson warn against relying on Garcilaso, noting serious problems with the sequence and location of towns and events in his narrative, and add, "some historians regard Garcilaso's La Florida to be more a work of literature than a work of history."[5] Lankford characterizes Garcilaso's La Florida as a collection of "legend narratives", derived from a much-retold oral tradition of the survivors of the expedition.[6]